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Social Media Marketing

Bernard CharleboisVP Market Development

Virtuo.ca CMS Technologies

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Seminar Goal

• To provide small business owners with information on using social media websites to market their business.

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Seminar Objectives

At the end of this seminar, you will be able to:

• Define “social media marketing”• Recognize the pros and cons of using social

media for business• List techniques for using social media to

promote your business

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Note: Facilitator to fill in time

Agenda

• Introduction

• Define “social media marketing”

• Recognize the Pros and Cons of Using Social Media for Business

• Exercise: List Techniques for Using Social Media to Promote Your Business

Start time

+5 min

+40 min

+90 min

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Toolkit

More available from the MSBCS website:

www.ontario.ca/sbcs

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Wake Robins’ Trilliums

• Wake owns a small greenhouse near Ottawa specializing in growing rare and unusual plants and foliage. Wake’s signature plant is the “Trillium”.

• He currently sells bulbs and live plants locally but wants to expand his business.

• Wake recently set up a website and web store but has had trouble getting people to visit his site.

• He wanted to attend this session, but couldn’t.

• At the end of this session, Wake Robins is going to ask you for some tips on using social media marketing techniques to increase traffic to his website.

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Social Media Marketing

Definition: Social Media Marketing is an approach to marketing your business by using electronic social media to raise visibility and to promote products and services.

Social media are primarily Internet and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. They are a collaborative way of using the web to enhance creativity and knowledge exchange.

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Module 1: Define “Social Media Marketing”

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Social Media

• Social media are distinct from industrial media, such as newspapers, television, and film.

• Social media are relatively cheap tools that enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information.

• Social media has become a useful tool for building social (and business) networks, and for exchanging ideas and knowledge (via words, pictures, videos and audio).

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Examples of Social MediaTechnologies include:

– Blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP.

Applications include:– Google Groups (reference, social networking) – Wikipedia (reference)– MySpace and Facebook(social networking)– Youmeo (social network aggregation)– Last.fm (personal music)– YouTube (social networking and video sharing)– Second Life (virtual reality)– Flickr (photo sharing)– Twitter (social networking and blogging)

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Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, wikis,

podcasts, pictures and video.

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Popular Sites

hyperlink

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Other Forms of Social Networking

• Blogging– A blog is a website (maintained by an individual or organization)

where people post entries of commentary, or other material such as graphics or video.

• Web Syndication– A form of syndication in which a section of a website is made

available for other sites to use.

• Social Bookmarking– Refers to saving web links to websites that you want to remember

and/or share with other people. You can save these bookmarks for yourself, or share with others.

hyperlink

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Module 2: Recognize the Pros & Cons of

Using Social Media for Business

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Benefits of Social Media Marketing

1. Lots of customers use social networking sites.

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YO

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Benefits of Social Media Marketing

1. Lots of customers use social networking sites.2. Inexpensive way to promote your business.3. Inexpensive way to collect demographic information.4. Great tool for customer service management.5. Helps to build your brand.6. It complements other marketing strategies such as a paid

advertising campaign.7. Increases your reach to targeted groups.

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YO

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Benefits of Social Media Marketing

1. Lots of customers use social networking sites.2. Inexpensive way to promote your business.3. Inexpensive way to collect demographic information.4. Great tool for customer service management.5. Helps to build your brand.6. It complements other marketing strategies such as a paid

advertising campaign.7. Increases your reach to targeted groups.8. Increases traffic to your site.9. You can build credibility by participating in relevant forums and

responding to questions.10. Offers a variety of tools that can be used to provide interactive

training for your products and services. 11. No specialized technical skills required.

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Limitations to Using Social Media Networking

1. Security2. Time3. Negative/harmful association4. Limited conversion of traffic into sales5. Servers slowing and crashing6. Amplifies negative opinions7. ROI is not immediate and direct8. Risk of non-communications people doing the

communicating9. People don’t trust social media

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Module 3: Techniques for Using Social

Media to Promote Your Business

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Exercise

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Before diving headlong into social media networking, Wake Robins has asked for your advice on how he should tackle it.  Task: Think about everything that you’ve heard so far and see if you can identify 10 “tips” that would improve his chances of success.

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Tips for Success

1. Understand how social media websites work2. Join online groups/mailing lists that are related to the products

and services you offer.3. Start with small steps and build on your success4. Contribute, collaborate, inform, and educate…but do not sell5. Social media marketing compliments traditional web marketing6. Create high quality content7. Regularly refresh content8. Consider video and/or photo sharing9. Encourage "friending" 10. Leave your name and URL when you comment on other blogs

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Bernard Charlebois613 590-1111 ext 2025

Questions?